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Pentatonic

guitarist playing chord
Expand Your Melodic Vocabulary and Attain Superior Fretboard Awareness With 'Parallel Pentatonic Modal Vision' Learn PPMV – an insightful mapping of the pentatonic scale’s multifaceted natural order
Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid perform Parkpop festival, The Hague, Netherlands, 25 June 1989.
“Is the Music an Expression of Your State of Being, Or is it Something You're Just Taking On?” Vernon Reid Talks Jazz, Theory and the Spirit of the Blues The Living Colour guitarist gets real in this interview from the GP archives.
BB Playing a 1960s Gibson ES-330TD
Here’s Some Blues You Can Really Use Improve your playing with this master class on everything you need to know for better blues.

Latest Pentatonic

Al Di Meola

Pentatonic Substitutions: How and Where to Use Them

By Tom Kolb published 10 May 21

Learn some more musically useful and colorful applications of a familiar scale.

Break out of the pentatonic rut with these five phrases

Beyond the Box: Five Phrases to Get You Out of the Pentatonic Rut

By Guitar Player Staff published 16 April 21

Five ways to push the pentatonic box’s boundaries and even break them altogether.

John Mayer

An Introduction to Pentatonic Substitutions

By Tom Kolb published 7 April 21

In part one of this two-part lesson, learn some new and musically colorful applications of a familiar scale.

No More Boring Solos! Master the Minor Pentatonic Scale

By Mac Randall published 19 June 20

Learn three techniques that can completely alter the way you approach the minor pentatonic.

How to Hack the Five Pentatonic Scale Shapes

By Vinnie DeMasi published 11 June 20

Learn how to use the five pentatonic box shapes in real-time soloing over a groove or song.

Spruce Up Your Pentatonic Scales with Note-Repositioning

By Vinnie DeMasi published 17 April 20

Conceptualizing your scales as a collection of notes that relate to one another and not just as a set pattern to be played in position by rote can open up a number of musical doors

Soar Along the Neck with the Minor Pentatonic Scale's Overlapping Patterns

By Tom Kolb published 16 April 20

Learn the five pentatonic box patterns and how to connect them like interlocking jigsaw puzzle pieces along the fretboard.

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